Hello and welcome to another Emlex podcast. I'm Laurel Henning, senior correspondent at Emlex,

and while it's still dark this morning in Brussels, joining me from the other

side of the world in Melbourne is James Panicki, managing editor for Australasia. Hello James.

Hello, Laurel, great talking to you. James, this is a recent move that you've undertaken from

Brussels where you were the managing editor of our bureau here and it's part of a new exciting project

for Emlax. So tell us a bit about what you'll be working on in Australia. Yes, there's the managing editor of our bureau here and it's part of a new exciting project for

Emlax so tell us a bit about what you'll be working on in Australia.

Yes that's right it's really a move to boost our Asian coverage so I'm based here in

Melbourne on the 13th floor of the Lexis Nexus building and the city centre. I'll be

overseeing regulatory coverage of Australasia.

Now, what we mean by Australasia is essentially Australia, New Zealand, and those parts of the

South Pacific where there's an independent competition regulator that's up and running at the moment.

And at last count, that was Fiji, Papua New Guinea,

French Polynesia, and as of this very week, in fact, also New Caledonia. And so essentially that,

I mean, it sounds exotic, but that is my new, that's my new life. And I'm enjoying some sunshine

after this year's particularly long and cold winter

in Brussels, which I assume is continuing undeterred at the moment.

Yeah, I did think of you as I walked to work this morning, hood up, hat on, gloves on.

Okay, so apart from letting our readers and listeners know what's to come out of Australia soon, we wanted today to give an update on a story you've been working on since actually early November

concerning an acquisition in the dairy industry.

The companies in question here are Canadian dairy giant Saputo,

which has actually had a market presence in Australia for several years now,

...